Dear Mr Chairman.
Secretary-General of the ITU,
Honourable Ministers,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is a big honor to me to make speech on ITU Plenipotentiary Conference which represents major international forum of policy making in ICT field. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you on behalf of the Government of Georgia.
Let me also offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to the Government of Republic of Korea for a warm welcome and for the excellent organization of this important Conference.
Georgia has achieved an important success in the field of Information and Telecommunication Technologies, particularly in Network Readiness Index Georgia has moved from 88 to 60th place, improved its rating by 28 positions in the past 2 years. Development rate is one of the highest in this regard.
According to the World Bank's annual report Doing Business 2014, Georgia ranked 8th in the world for ease of starting and doing business. The procedure for business registration and issuing personal documents (such as passport, ID card) and other types of public services require only 15-20 minutes. And this is achieved due to effective use of ICT technologies.
In 2014 by the initiative of the Prime Minister of Georgia Government approved the concept of access to the Broadband Internet for every citizen. According to the concept, an open access infrastructure must be developed all over the country, in the nearest future, which will connect all the populated areas to the 100GB/S backbone. During the process of creating of the mentioned infrastructure, the government will provide a positive environment for interested investors as much as possible.
Within the concept 500 Community Innovation Center establishment is planned in libraries of the country, which apart from access to the internet and technologies provides the process of receiving competitive knowledge and also opportunity of innovation start-up establishment.
We are reaching the era, where the border between virtual and real things is becoming increasingly smaller, we are entering an era where people are able to transfer bits to the atoms, where machines are creating machines, ladies and gentlemen the third industrial revolution has already started.
In our opinion, International Telecommunication Union shall be in the center of these challenges and it shall provide maximum interaction among countries in the process of sharing knowledge and cooperation as well.
I would like to draw your attention to an discovery of an American mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash who made a significant change in economic theory and the general consciousness of humanity. It shows that cooperation and mutual balancing is beneficial for the both parties, and the actions against each other are disadvantageous for both sides.
Unfortunately, a lot of injustice is ongoing in the 21st century, including the fact that the occupation of the territory of other countries became usual. Through violating international norms and ITU acts international telephone codes of Russian Federation are used on the occupied territories of Georgia to make International phone calls.
Once again, we would like to tell our northern neighbors that interaction, cooperation and mutual respect will be an important basis for development of both countries, let's live friendly and without opposing each other.
And finally, this year on November 24-26 Georgia, Tbilisi hosts 12th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium (WTIS) for the first time. I would like to invite you all to the mentioned event. Georgia is the country with ancient history, culture, the country which is the homeland of wine, with its unique landscape and hospitable people, we would be glad to host you at the mentioned event.
Once again I wish good luck to the work of the conference, prosperity and development to the countries, and success to the future activities of the ITU.
Thank you very much for your time and attention.
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